The energy transition causes significant challenges in the building sector, which demands profound changes not only on the economic perspective, such as implementing innovative financial models to overcome financial barriers, but also fostering cooperation between all actors involved, paying particular attention to citizens and communities.
It is essential to advance the business cases for energy efficiency measures and to increase support for respective projects, by standardising citizen financing in investment programs. Therefore, there is a need to consider the role of different actors, such public authorities, financial institutions and project developers, and the interactions with innovative citizen models, particularly at the regional and national scale.
The main objective of CitizEE was to support European public authorities to scale up funding for energy efficiency in the building sector by attracting citizen private investments.
CitizEE has addressed this objective by means of integrating tailored and widely adopted crowdfunding and cooperative financing schemes with adequate available or to be developed Public Financing Instruments (PFIs). As a result, CitizEE enabled the set-up of large-scale community energy efficiency programs while strengthening know-how of regional/national key stakeholders.
Citizen financing schemes (CFs), crowdfunding and cooperative models alike, have been a success in financing renewable energy projects. However, citizen access to such alternative financing mechanisms is still far from having reached its full potential, especially when energy efficiency projects are the ones seeking funding.
The development of Citizen Financing Schemes for Energy Efficiency projects (CFs4EE) is, in fact, a relatively new concept, in some cases, with limited capacity to increase investments levels due to unfavourable boundary conditions.
CitizEE’s ambition was to put in place a sound enabling legal, financial and operational environment aimed at: (i) making a more efficient use of public funds (ii) mitigating performance & credit risks, (iii) closing financing gaps, (iv) enlarging citizen access financing, (v) reducing transaction costs (vi) enhancing capacity of local crowdfunding operators and cooperatives and (vii) stimulating the required investment towards higher renovation rates and thus a more efficient building stock.
To meet its ambitious goals the work has been structured for achieving the following objectives:
1. Prepare the groundwork for the establishment of Citizen Investment Platforms.
2. Evaluate competitiveness of the CFs4EE Financing Schemes (CFs4EE + PFIs) to be developed by the project.
3. Demonstrate the viability and market potential of CitizEE’s CFs4EE Financing Schemes.
4. Develop recommendations for improving the market and regulatory framework.
5. Enhance the in-house capacities of the relevant stakeholders.
6. Promote the project concepts and its advantages among those who could support citizen financing schemes deployment.
